December 31, 2003 2000 PDT ( FTW ) – FTW has
stressed that events in the five years following September
11th 2001 would determine the course of human history
for the next five hundred years. In looking at the tectonic
pressures building during a presidential election year
-- as driven by the emerging reality of Peak Oil and
Gas -- it now appears that, of those five years, 2004
may well be marked by some of the greatest political,
economic and military changes in history. Much of this
upheaval will have been caused by the success of independent
journalists, researchers, activists, courts, and congress
in challenging the actions of the US Empire at home and
abroad since 9/11 and holding it accountable for its
own statements, actions and documents.

This brings to mind the proverb, “Be careful of what
you pray for. You just might get it.” This beast is dangerous
now and signs are abundant, from the unrealized terror
scares over the holidays, to the re-emergence of Mad
Cow disease, to a suddenly renewed government interest
in anthrax, that nothing is beyond the pale if the beast
is threatened. Even the Washington Post's David
Rothkopf planted seeds on November 24th when he suggested
that a terrorist attack might “disrupt” the 2004 presidential
elections. We should not be surprised.

With attacks on US and coalition troops in Iraq having
intensified since the December 14 “capture” of Saddam
Hussein and with the US losing the peace in Afghanistan,
as attested in a recent report from the Council on Foreign
Relations, it appears that some major distractions are
going to be needed to keep the American economic and
political machine operating. A December 28th story in
the Post revealed that the rate of US casualties
in Iraq had doubled in the four month period from September
through the end of the year. There was to be no post-Saddam
dividend on that account.

It's an open question whether the customary economic
moves to grow the economy in advance of an election are
not going to reveal some of the darker aspects of Peak
Oil and Gas before the election even gets here. As the
US, Chinese and European economies expand (China's
is exploding), so does energy consumption. It is a deadly
game to increase oil and gas use now and risk more blackouts
and price spikes before next November.

A strong breeze is hitting the house of cards.

The success of challenges to the US version of 9/11
and to the fraudulent intelligence justifying last March's
invasion of Iraq has put some major obstacles in front
of Wall Street's and Washington's post-9/11 agenda. In
the context of a presidential election year those obstacles
will be of primary concern to the Bush administration
as it seeks to hold on to its position as CEO of an emerging
New World Order, and it must do everything possible to
remove or neutralize all of them before then.

It is for that reason that Thomas Kean, the Republican
chair of the so-called Independent Commission investigating
9/11, chose on December 17th to advance a modified limited
hangout saying that the attacks could have been prevented
had it not been for incompetence and intelligence failures
on the part of middle managers. The timing of that announcement,
just four days after the “capture” of Saddam Hussein,
was a weak attempt to bury unresolved questions about
9/11 in boosted Bush approval ratings. The fact that
Kean decided to make his announcement after having subpoenaed
FAA records of Air Force and government actions on
9/11, but before receiving them; and after agreeing to
the tepid compromise of reviewing partial extracts of
George Bush's pre-9/11 intelligence briefs, but before
seeing them, is ample evidence of his political motive.
Investigative bodies rarely pass public judgment before
reviewing the evidence.

If backed into a corner, the neocons and the global
economic system which committed its support to them in
2000 will likely resort to extreme and draconian measures
which may mark the end of the façade of American
democracy. 2004 is going to be a very dangerous year.
The major challenges faced by the Bush administration
are both legal and self-created. They reflect inevitable
challenges to positions adopted and statements made by
the neocons since the US embarked on a course of infinite
war for oil. They call to mind another old adage once
expressed by a recovering alcoholic who said, “If you
don't tell a lie, you don't have to remember what you
said”. The Bush administration is walking an unraveling
tightrope.

Cheney's Energy Task
Force

FTW has long maintained that
the deepest and darkest secrets of 9/11 lay buried in
the records of Vice President Cheney's National Energy
Policy Development Group (NEPDG) which concluded its
work and published a report admitting critical shortages
in energy supplies in May of 2001. While those admissions
were vague --- and located almost exclusively in buried
sections of the report not mentioned in executive summaries
or press accounts --- they clearly indicated that a major
national priority was the acquisition of new sources
of hydrocarbon energy against a backdrop of ever-decreasing
domestic production.

Shortly after the report was submitted, a battle ensued
between the House Government Reform Committee and Democrat
Henry Waxman over the records of who had met with the
panel and what had been discussed. While much of the
early attention was focused on the participation of corporations
like Enron, ExxonMobil and BP, FTW asserted
that the real secrets had to do with the task force's
awareness of peaking world oil and gas supplies and looming
impacts on human civilization. Since the task force had
been paid for with taxpayer money, Congress rightly felt
that the public had a right to know who had been invited
and what had been discussed.

Initial suits by the Government Accounting Office (GAO)
and citizen groups including Judicial Watch and the Sierra
Club affirmed the constitutional right (imperative) of
Congress and the people to have access to the files.
An initial ruling in US District Court agreed and the
US Court of Appeals declined to intervene after a White
House appeal. As a result, a very incomplete set of
records was released by agencies that assisted the task
force while the White House itself, arguing executive
privilege, has steadfastly refused to reveal a single
page of its records.

On December 15, 2003, as reported by the Associated
Press, the US Supreme Court announced that it would make
a ruling in the case sometime in July 2004, just three
months shy of the presidential election. This presents
a real problem for the Bush administration. Legally,
there is little to sustain its obviously illegal actions.
And presenting the American people with another politically-tainted
Supreme Court ruling just months before the election
could easily rekindle debate over the Court's illegal
Bush v. Gore ruling which stopped the Florida recount
in 2000.

Aside from reminding the Court through widespread publication
of stories about the pending decision there is little
the American people can do to influence the outcome.
However, the Court is already feeling enough pressure
as a multitude of Bush administration extralegal positions
come under increasing fire and close public scrutiny.
In order for the machine to continue to function it must
protect the value of the American brand name as reflected
by its ability to convince large portions of the populace
that the system still works. While the American people
may not fully understand the implications of a Supreme
Court ruling favoring the Bush administration in this
case, the lawyers who make the system work and journalists
who report on it most certainly will.

This is the ultimate high-stakes, must-win decision
for the administration in the coming year. Full disclosure
of Cheney's records would enable publications like FTW to
once and for all answer for the American people and
the world the single biggest question about 9/11, “What
would motivate them to do such a horrible thing? What
could have been so important?” In a criminal trial for
murder this would be one of the three basic elements
required for a conviction: the motive. The method and
opportunity have already been established.

9/11-RELATED
TERROR PROSECUTIONS

Only one person in the entire world has been convicted
of anything connected to the attacks of 9/11. Very few
people have ever heard of Mounir el-Motassadeq who was
arrested in Germany in November 2001 and, according to
a December 16 Wall Street Journal report, convicted
this year as an accessory to 3,066 murders. His conviction
is about to be overturned solely as a result of the failure
of a related German prosecution. That case failed recently
because the US refused to produce a key witness who might
have offered exonerating testimony, Ramzi bin al-Shibh.

Bin al-Shibh, reportedly captured in Pakistan a year
to the day after the attacks, has been elevated to the
status of principal planner in the 9/11 legend. Like
one of the other alleged key planners, Khalid Shaikh
Muhammad (KSM), he has yet to make a single public appearance
while reams of convenient confessions from him and KSM
are released by the US government to support its unsupportable
version of events. Bin al-Shibh is reportedly being held
at Guantanamo, outside the reach of media, lawyers and
the Constitution. The credibility risk to the US government,
as it spins a tangled web of conflicting data, is that
at some point, in order to maintain any credibility at
all, it will have to produce real and verifiable statements
from those it holds in custody. It must produce the witnesses
themselves, and in the flesh.

On December 11, 2003 the German trial of a second person
charged with complicity in the 9/11 attacks, Abdelghani
Mzoudi, collapsed when a statement from bin al-Shibh
was presented to the court exonerating Mzoudi from any
knowledge of the 9/11attacks. The statement made its
way into court after German intelligence defied a US
request to keep the statement out of court and obeyed
German law which -- like US law -- demands that any exculpatory
evidence be disclosed during trial. According to stories
in The Guardian and The New York Times, German
intelligence had had the exculpatory material in hand
before Mzoudi's trial began. This leaves open the question
of why the US government had sought to illegally suppress
evidence demonstrating Mzoudi's innocence.

The answer is clear. The US needs a 9/11 conviction,
any 9/11 conviction, desperately.

The German judge who dismissed Mzoudi's case opened
the door for an immediate appeal and reversal in the
case of Motassadeq who, like Mzoudi, was connected with
members of Mohammed Atta's Hamburg cell. Both men are
Moroccans and both had sought bin al-Shibh's testimony
in their defense. That access had repeatedly been denied
to Motassadeq's attorneys. In an omen for future 9/11
prosecutions – if they ever happen – Judge Klaus Ruhle
said, as reported in the Times on December
12, “that while he had strong doubts about the reliability
of the evidence, he could not properly evaluate it without
testimony from bin al-Shibh.”

This leaves open the additional possibility that in
order to avoid future and more dangerous exposures of
its own criminal conduct, the US government created the
bin al-Shibh testimony in order to prevent Mzoudi's trial
from exposing even more glaring defects in the US-created
9/11 legend after it became clear that German courts
were not going to yield to John Ashcroft's wishes.

In a very revealing passage at the end of its report
the Times' Desmond Butler seemed to acknowledge
lingering worldwide questions about whether KSM and bin
al-Shibh had ever actually been taken into custody. He
wrote, “ According to the police's letter to the court,
the witness presumed to be Mr. bin al-Shibh
made his statement last month.”

If Motassadeq's conviction is overturned, renewed examination
of bin al-Shibh's role in 9/11 and subsequent “capture” could
risk exposure of other lies about 9/11. This is especially
true with regard to the deliberately confused identity
of the “paymaster” for the attacks, Omar Saeed Sheikh,
and the man who ordered him to transfer $100,000 to Mohammed
Atta just weeks before 9/11 -- then-Pakistani intelligence
chief General Mahmud Ahmad. Ahmad was known to have
close ties to CIA Director George Tenet and was in Washington
during the week of the attacks, meeting with Tenet, senior
members of the Bush administration and key congressional
leaders like House Intelligence Chair Porter Goss and
Senate Intelligence Chair Bob Graham.

Zacariahs Moussaoui, the so-called 20th hijacker,
jailed in Minnesota shortly before 9/11, was made famous
by the legendary Rowley Memorandum, written by the FBI's
Minneapolis legal affairs agent Coleen Rowley, TIME Magazine's
Woman of the Year in 2002. In her memo she described
deliberate, heavy-handed and successful attempts by FBI
headquarters personnel, including Radical Fundamentalist
Unit chief David Frasca, to suppress an investigation
that might have prevented the attacks. As time has passed
it has become apparent that details in the Rowley memorandum
have become enshrined – as noted by one researcher – as “holy
scripture” about 9/11. But what if some of those details
were part of a fabricated legend made more credible by
Rowley's protestations? For an excellent analysis of
this scenario please see There's Something About
Omar: Truth, Lies, and the Legend of 9/11 by Chaim
Kupferberg at: http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/KUP310A.html .

Since his incarceration and the filing of charges against
him, Moussaoui has repeatedly sought the testimony of
Khalid Shaikh Muhammad, Mustafa Ahmed Hawsawi and bin
al-Shibh. As in the above cases the US government has
refused to allow depositions or the questioning of witnesses
that might exonerate him. A US district court eventually
ordered the witnesses to be produced and depositions
to be taken. As a result, Moussaoui's prosecution stalled
while John Ashcroft's Department of Justice appealed
to a higher court for a ruling which is not likely to
come down in Ashcroft's favor.

Given the outcome in the German trials it is extremely
likely that going into the November election the Bush
administration will not have a single 9/11-related conviction
to show the American public; a fact which will surely
be mentioned by the Democratic nominee and noted in the
press.

Two additional recent US court decisions have further
impaired the administration's ability to keep a lid on
the lies of 9/11 and seriously compounded the above problems.
On December 20, the AP reported that,
in two separate Appeals Court rulings, it had been decided
that the US could not keep detainees held in Guantanamo
Cuba indefinitely outside the US legal system (i.e. the
public eye) and that American citizens like alleged
dirty-bomb suspect Jose Padilla could not be denied constitutional
protections because they were allegedly “enemy combatants” being
held outside US territory.

The result of the first ruling is to guarantee an inevitable
point in time when the US government will have to produce
Khalid Shaikh Muhammad, bin al-Shibh and other key figures
in the 9/11 legend for public inspection. FTW has
not a single doubt that the government's credibility
will undeniably collapse at that moment if even the most
basic questions are asked by the world's press and defense
lawyers with an IQ higher than that of a baked potato.

The result of all these precedents would make it impossible
for the government to successfully maintain the credibility
of its accounts of 9/11.

SADDAM
HUSSEIN

What were they thinking?

Assuming that it is the real Saddam Hussein that was
officially taken into custody on December 14 th FTW cannot
conceive of a single scenario in which the US government
will ever let him come to trial. The world will not accept
a secret trial.

The New York Times wrote on December 17th, “The
trial of Saddam Hussein must do several things at once.
It must educate Iraqis and the world about the nature
of his regime, adhere to the highest international standards
of fairness, and provide a mechanism for appropriate
punishment. The best way to achieve those goals is by
creating a tribunal inside Iraq under United Nations
authority, staffed by Iraqi and international judges
and prosecutors.”

But the dilemma faced by the US was made clear by the
Agence France Presse which wrote on December 20th, “Controversial
French lawyer Jacques Verges says he is willing to defend
Saddam Hussein in court and, if he can, bring world leaders
to the witness stand, in what could be a huge embarrassment
for the United States, France and other countries.

“…He insisted that ‘all Western heads of state,' from
the time of the 1980-1988 Iraq-Iran war to the latest
Iraq conflict, should take the stand when the imprisoned
former Iraqi officials go on trial… ‘When we reprove
the use of certain weapons (we need to know) who sold
these weapons,' he said about Iraq 's past purchase of
arms from France, Britain, the United States and Russia.”

Joe Conason of The New York Observer observed
on Dec 22nd that, “ An obvious prospective witness
is Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who acted as a
special envoy to Baghdad during the early 1980's. On
a courtroom easel, Saddam might display the famous December
1983 photograph of him shaking hands with Mr. Rumsfeld,
who acknowledges that the United States knew Iraq was
using chemical weapons. If his forces were using Tabun,
mustard gas, and other forbidden poisons, he might ask,
why did Washington restore diplomatic relations with
Baghdad in November 1984?

There are many problems with the details of Saddam's
convenient capture at a time when Bush popularity was
sinking. A number of world papers from Britain to Australia
have noted that Kurdish rebel groups laid claim to Saddam's
capture before US sources released an official story.
The Kurdish stories are credible but do not reveal the
date of capture which might account for the former Iraqi
dictator's disheveled appearance.

On December 21, FTW received the following
unsourced photograph in an email titled “From a friend
in Saudi Arabia.” The picture purports to show two
US soldiers demonstrating how they lifted a Styrofoam
block seal to Saddam's hiding place. The picture poses
two problems for the US story. First, it clearly depicts
ripened dates hanging from a tree branch. This ripening
only occurs in the summer months and by December dates
have either long since been harvested, rotted black on
the branch or have fallen from the trees. Next to the
dates is a line holding an unknown meat drying in the
sun. Again, this is a process – according to Iraqi and
Arab sources – which only occurs during the summer months.

The AP photos dispel other rumors that Saddam had been
trapped under a concrete block. AP close-ups of the
block above clearly indicate that it is lightweight.
This is supported by the less-than-aggressive hand grips
used by the soldiers in the photograph. While it is possible
that bricks had been placed on top of the foam seal,
it remains true that if Saddam had been captured sometime
earlier, he was held a prisoner in the spider hole while
his captors occupied the Spartan farmhouse above.

The timing and manner of Hussein's capture defy logic.
He can only be tried in public and even if convenient
confessions from him, unsupported by video or sworn testimony,
allow the US to locate planted weapons of mass destruction,
the cards of this poker hand are going to have to be
fully disclosed at some point. The Bush administration
knows this and FTW concludes that even as it
announced his capture, it also had decided that Saddam
Hussein would never be tried in public or allowed to
defend himself. This makes his capture an incredibly
ominous event. Something big will have to happen to prevent
the trial from taking place.

A GRAND
JURY OVER THE PLAME/WILSON
CASE

Finally, a December 26th story in The
Washington Post reported that a fourth prosecutor
has been added to the Department of Justice team investigating
who it was in the White House who leaked the identity
of CIA officer Valerie Plame to journalist Bob Novak
last year. Plame is the wife of former US Ambassador
Joseph Wilson who was dispatched on the orders of Dick
Cheney to investigate documents purporting to show
that Saddam Hussein had been attempting to purchase
uranium from Niger. The documents were crude forgeries,
yet President Bush mentioned them in his state-of-the-union
address and much of his cabinet relied upon them to
justify the Iraqi invasion even after Wilson had reported
that they were fakes and the claims were false.

According to the Post story FBI sources have
indicated that a grand jury may shortly be empanelled
to investigate the case. If so, Bush administration problems
will multiply as more and more of the evidence appears
before a body over which John Ashcroft cannot exert
complete control.

The Post story added that, “On Monday [Dec. 22] the
Senate minority leader and the ranking Democrat on the
Armed Services committee sent a letter to Attorney
General John Ashcroft demanding more information about
the probe. ‘We request that you provide us with an overall
status of the investigation, including the number of
people the Justice Department has interviewed, the number
of briefings you have received, the general types of
information you are briefed on, what conditions you have
placed on the scope of these briefings to ensure the
independence of this investigation, and whether you have
discussed this case with senior administration officials
outside the Justice Department…

“The Senators said that it is an apparent conflict of
interest for Ashcroft to be briefed on the subject,
and again requested a special counsel to prosecute the
case…”

The Daschle-Levin letter apparently hit home. In a surprise
announcement on December 30th – as reported on CNN – John
Ashcroft announced that he had recused himself from
any role in the investigation and that control of the
case would pass to the US Attorney in Chicago, Patrick
Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald's selection was apparently governed
by nothing more than political concerns. But it should
be noted that under US law, US Attorneys operate independently
of the Attorney General. (See: http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/04_04_02_elephant.html )

This development further weakens Bush's ability to control
a legal powder keg that, like so many others, could topple
his regime.

Of key interest in this investigation is a document
which surfaced out of the State Department's Bureau of
Intelligence and Research and the fact that there have
been several mysterious deaths in that unit in recent
months. (FTW is currently preparing a detailed
subscriber-only investigation of the links between these
developments, the deaths and the fact that the CIA and
the Bush administration are in a feud just short of a “shooting
war”.)

If a grand jury is empanelled in this case it could – as
was the case with the Watergate grand jury and Richard
Nixon – spell the end of the Bush administration. The
current regime has proven itself an inept manager of
world affairs for the benefit of the financial system
and offensive to most of the world's population. As FTW has
said for a year, George W. Bush may be unbeatable in
the election. He will certainly raise more money than
all of his challengers and, if the three preceding years
are any measure, he has demonstrated that he will go
to any lengths to retain power. But that does not make
him unstoppable. Richard Nixon believed that he was unstoppable
and played a tough poker hand to the very end. The difference
between Richard Nixon and George W. Bush is that Richard
Nixon capitulated when he saw that further struggle would
destroy the country.

Against the backdrop of Peak oil and Gas and what lies
inevitably in our future, George W. Bush may see no similar
grounds for restraint.